I’ve never heard of “unlimited” retakes…and “until they get an A”? So is every student in every class eventually get an “A”? (An entire school of 4.0 students?) Are they retaking the exact same test? I can’t imagine teachers have an unlimited number of unique tests to give. Are they really learning the material or just learning the answers? Does the whole class have to wait until everyone has gotten their A before they move on to the next topic?
I don’t think we are getting the whole story there.
At our school there is no school wide policy. However, when a class does poorly as a whole, I’ve observed that some teachers may do any of the following: allow for a curve, allow extra credit, give the test again, or allow students to make corrections to get back points. It’s really an individual teacher thing and I don’t think retakes are very common.
A student who didn’t get the concept well can work harder and achieve better mastery of the subject. I don’t see how it can be bad. The primary focus of tests must be helping students to learn better, and not to weed out incompetents, in my humble opinion.
My D never had a class with test retaking policy. But she had plenty of of them with essay rewriting. It made her work harder and achieve more. I was very happy for that. A class grade is partially on persistent hard working and not all about quick mastery.
The only thing I ever heard from my kids was that some high school teachers would drop the lowest test grade…and that occurs in some classes in college. Never heard of a high school teacher doing retakes. Grade inflation at it’s best example.
@bopper Exactly. One HS in our town has a retake policy if you make 80 or below (currently a C but state is changing to 10 point scale so wonder what they’ll do now). Smart kids don’t study and then purposefully get a score that allows them to retest on the test they’ve now seen. After all, it would stink to make an 82 and not get a retake when others tank the first test then make high 90s (sarcasm). These are kids in IB program. The funny thing is a lot of these kids express surprise at how hard college is - well, guess what, you don’t know how to study.
I’ve seen the argument for not letting below a 60 (or whatever) be recorded since extremely bad scores in the 20s or 30s are hard to rebound from when averaged in. However I don’t think allowing retests at an 80 helps learning. My girls did have teachers that would allow test corrections - mostly math and physics- since the teacher felt that mastering material that future material builds on was important. But they could get at most half credit added back. So if made 70 on test and test corrected, teacher added 15 points for 85 on test which got them to a B. That seems fair and useful for students and helped where wrong answers were due to computation errors and not because they didn’t understand concept.
If teachers want to reward improvement over the semester, they can do other things like changing how tests are weighted or small grades that give practice without huge impact on grade.
“Have you ever had a boss who gave you a deadline for a project, didn’t like it and let you do it over and over again until she or he was satisfied?”
Every editor everywhere. Only they didn’t “let” us do it over, it was pretty much mandated.
Regarding test retakes, D’s school doesn’t have a unified policy, but she does have some teachers who will let students rework the wrong answers for half credit, some who will allow a total retake of the test, and some who generously curve. As a parent, I actually prefer allowing students to rework the wrong answers as it helps them understand why they got something wrong. The other two possibilities don’t do that as well.
My kids’ high school doesn’t have a retake policy (and I’ve never heard of a teacher allowing a student to retake a test), but some teachers, particularly in math or science, will allow students to do “test corrections” for half credit. It makes total sense - redoing his work forces the student to go back and learn material he didn’t know well enough in the first instance, and the ability to earn back points on the test incentivizes the student to do so. Kids learn more, which is the goal.
We had a fourth grade transfer student who learned this the hard way. School she came from allowed retakes of spelling tests until you got them all right. Our school allowed nothing to be wrong without being docked. If your name, student #, and anything else the teacher wanted on the paper (date, JMJ+, teacher’s name, school name) wasn’t on the test, no credit. The harsh life of a 4th grader in catholic school.
I have never heard of an “unlimited retakes” policy, but it seems like it would completely remove incentive for the student to try to master the material in a timely enough manner to do well on the first try. It also seems like a tremendous waste of time and energy for the teacher administering the tests.
Yes, and I call BS on the need to take a test over and over and over…to call it “mastering” and generate an “A” grade. That is the epitome of grade inflation. I could maybe go along with one retake and average the scores and I can go along with a slew of different tests over a semester and drop the lowest, but really come 'on…are we really as a society unwilling to hold our education system to a high standard?
When we homeschooled I taught for mastery and not for grades, I never thought twice about my kids doing it again and again until they got it. How is it not a higher standard to make sure that all students, not just the ones that scores 100% on the first try, truly understand the material?
at our HS - some teachers (math and science) have adopted a standards based grading (“grading for learning”)- Students can retake a test after having shown that they have practiced or reviewed material; there is no limit to the number of retakes (though in reality- rarely is there enough time for more than 1 retake); retakes are done during lunch, study hall, before/after school; the retake is always a different exam; and the most recent score is the one that counts. Because a student’s grade only reflects what he/she has learned, there is no ‘extra credit’ or grade for having turned in homework. Final grades are based solely on test performance. It takes the focus off of grade-grubbing and puts it on mastering content.
If this is “new” education I’m not for it and it’s a good think I’m not an adjunct anymore. If you are teaching a class and the majority of kids fail a test with a D or an F, then there’s a problem and perhaps remedial teaching or a change in “how” you teach the material is needed and a retest is in order, but I’m definitely not for “re-testing”. on an individual basis. That is completely different form a student needing remedial help to “catch up” for the next test and part of the reason I can support dropping the lowest grade. I would also feel different if I were teaching in a resource room for disabled kids, but simply taking a test over and over to increase a grade for a supposedly college bound student taking a pre-college course curriculum in 9-12 I don’t believe in.
from what I saw at my kids’ school (retakes-yes; homework/extra credit- no) is that grades dropped some. So many kids were propping up their grade w/ grades for turning in homework, class participation, and extra credit. The standards-based approach tells you more directly whether the student mastered the material or not.
If standards based is the approach then grades are irrelevant and GPA is meaningless…kids have either mastered…or not. I could go there and then use standardized testing to do the college sort or see high schools move toward a mid-term/final test to determine GPA with homework and testing w/retakes not part of the GPA formulation.